


Truly, Deeply

by manic_intent



Series: Truly, Deeply [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Blowjobs, Kitchen Sex, M/M, That strange fic about cascading consequences, Warning: No Disney Ending, postcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5014705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illya killed his first man when he was eighteen. The spetsnaz were called in as part of the raid on Kengir, when prisoners in the labor camp had launched a surprise rebellion and had seized the camp compound. The man he killed was a sentry on a rooftop, one of the prisoner-rebels, and Illya would never see his face. He had felt only a faint surge of excitement, when the rifle had kicked into his shoulder, then satisfaction, as the spotter confirmed his kill. The kill was surgical and neat, like shooting a hare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truly, Deeply

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was again vaguely inspired by random Friday twitter conversations, the lyrics of Tainted Love, and also by a strange trend lately that I’ve noticed since Hartwin for some readers to disagree with the endings to some of my fics, sometimes condescendingly. This is rather new to me… ^^;; even coming off mega fandoms like Avengers, Cherik, SPN and Hobbit, where despite the wider readership and greater internal fandom drama there seemed to be fewer angry people on comments. 
> 
> Now entitlement isn’t new to me or to fandom by any means (one just needs to look at the amount of abuse that GRRM gets every time that he does anything that isn’t writing ASoIAF…). However I think readers need to keep in mind that fanwriters are doing this for **fun**. So by all means tell me that you hate my ending if you really need to get it off your chest. But at least be civil about it. And don’t expect me to change my mind or even feel bad about it. 
> 
> For a story, particularly a longfic, that I’ve spent maybe an average of 60 hours on, easily, there’s usually a reason why I landed on that ending. So no, I won’t change fic endings. But feel free to write fix-its. I don’t care when people use my ‘verses. ;) And remember, it could have been worse. 
> 
> So. This fic.
> 
>  **DISCLAIMERS & WARNINGS**: This fic will not have a Disney ending. You have been warned.

0.0

Illya killed his first man when he was eighteen. The spetsnaz were called in as part of the raid on Kengir, when prisoners in the labor camp had launched a surprise rebellion and had seized the camp compound. The man he killed was a sentry on a rooftop, one of the prisoner-rebels, and Illya would never see his face. He had felt only a faint surge of excitement, when the rifle had kicked into his shoulder, then satisfaction, as the spotter confirmed his kill. The kill was surgical and neat, like shooting a hare.

It was the second kill, the third, the fourth and more, that gave him evil dreams for a week. When the T-34s rolled into the complex, they trundled over barrack walls and prisoners alike, until their tracks were bloody and the prison compound became an abattoir of sulfur bombs and cordite and shattered gristle. It was the first that Illya had encountered of the sheer charnel stench of the battlefield, the hellish noise of it, of screams and shouts and the roar of the tanks firing blanks, of the firecracker staccato of Kalashnikovs, people begging and pleading until their cries cut rudely out - or lingered, long after, winding desperately and hopelessly to whimpers. 

Illya had killed a man who had come desperately at him with a kitchen knife, shooting him in the throat, and then he had killed until the order had come to stop killing, after which, his boots muddy with sleet and guts and vomit and waste, Illya had staggered quietly to a side and emptied out his breakfast behind a wall. The bodies lay thick and deep, like hewn wheat in a field out of Hell itself, hundreds upon hundreds. Later it would be announced, officially, that only thirty-seven people had been killed, and Illya would think - thirty-seven, five hundred, seven hundred, did it matter anyway? Life was cheap when there was so much of it. Then he was sick all over again.

He killed his first man on behalf of the KGB years after, and felt nothing at all. _No mercy, no ideology, no emotions_. So his handlers had taught. He had been in Latvia, in the basement of an elegant domed building with tall windows, late of the Art Nouveau movement, where the KGB kept… inconvenient… people. The locals called it stūra māja - the Corner House, and they already knew to fear the KGB. Illya had been working over a man suspected of being part of a local cadre seeing to destabilise Soviet influence in Latvia. 

Under stūra māja, kept swelteringly hot, blindly bright and stinking of human sewage, Illya had dragged out a random prisoner when told, from a cell stuffed twenty deep with the terrified, and had cut his throat in the corridor with a filleting knife, in full view of the cells. The prisoner had been rank with sweat, and Illya’s hands had slipped once on his neck until he had managed to get a grip on his hair. Illya had smiled when he had killed the random prisoner, for effect, and after that, the cadre man had talked.

When Illya had first met Napoleon Solo and Gaby Teller, he would have thought nothing of disposing of the CIA agent, or of handing over Teller to a basement just like the one in stūra māja, where she would have been broken for information. A man did not become a rising star in the KGB if he was squeamish. At most, Illya would have felt some satisfaction, perhaps, at a job done well, the same satisfaction he had felt once, long ago in Kengir, when a rifle had kicked his shoulder and a man had died as a consequence. 

But he had failed to kill Solo and acquire Teller, and then life had become… complicated.

Zero.

Napoleon killed his first man in Attu, a godforsaken rock that looked like the spine of some humped and sleeping beast, streaked with snow. Frostbite was rampant, and more than half of his squad lost toes and fingers, the flesh rotting off, in the days and weeks to come. Napoleon had been one of the lucky ones. His first kill had been a Japanese defender in the bloody desperate slog to excise them from where they were entrenched in tactically better ground, and at that point in time, and for weeks, Napoleon had been too busy to think about it.

Two weeks of bitter mutual insanity had culminated in a suicide attack from the Japanese that had cut through American front line positions like a hot knife through butter, and they had fought like men possessed. Napoleon ran out of ammunition early on and had to resort to his bayonet and at the end of it all he had broken the blade off in the ribs of a soldier, and was half blind and deaf from savagery and gunfire. He was sixteen, having lied about his age to escape a small town in Minnesota. It would be years more before he could escape the war itself, at which point Napoleon decided that he’d had enough of the world at large and its rules. He had come out of a World War unscathed, more or less, and he was determined to have full agency over the rest of his life, to hell with the consequences. It didn’t quite work out that way.

When Napoleon first met Illya he was a veteran of the CIA, his recklessness long tempered by the leash at his throat, and he no longer had nightmares about being mired in blood and snow. Years upon years of ugly covert ops had long bricked that away into an old memory, but one ugly memory out of many. Napoleon did not now have many qualms about wetwork, but it was, he had long decided, a waste to get rid of anyone particularly interesting, or anyone particularly beautiful, and Illya Kuryakin was both. 

And then life had become… complicated, but in all things Napoleon was a survivor, and now, as before, more than a decade ago and knee-deep in the bestial madness of a World War, Napoleon had always loved chaos.

1.0.

It was after Istanbul, during their second mission in Tokyo, that Napoleon had started… flirting, with Illya. Illya could not understand it. Illya and Gaby had reached a mutual understanding of friendship - and friendship only - after a series of arguments in Istanbul that had culminated in Napoleon having to mediate, of all people. As such, Illya was indeed alone, but Napoleon had not shown any particular sexual interest in _men_ before, let alone in Illya. At first, Illya had simply assumed that Napoleon was trying to annoy him.

But then the overtures continued, the gentle ‘accidental’ touches, the ‘friendly’ private dinners, the gifts, Napoleon’s _smile_ , stripped - seemingly - of artifice. Illya hadn’t been sure if this was just how Napoleon chose to treat his friends, except that Napoleon was not like this with Gaby: with Gaby he was his usual playfully arrogant self. 

Alone in a safehouse in Tokyo, Napoleon kissed Illya for the first time, after yet another near-death experience; Illya bit him in response but Napoleon was determined, pinning Illya to the wall and licking against him until Illya shuddered and succumbed, blindsided. He allowed the light caresses, up and down his arms, let Napoleon take over, lost and uncertain. 

This was not Illya’s first kiss, but this was the first gentleness that had been pressed upon him for longer than he could remember, and Illya had only ever understood tenderness in fits and starts. He felt completely disarmed. Napoleon seemed content to just kiss him, as though they weren’t alone behind enemy lines and alive purely out of luck; as though they had all the time in the world and Illya was everything that mattered. Illya pressed his hands awkwardly on Napoleon’s hips and felt a contented little purr shake against him as he kissed Napoleon back, clumsily, confused. 

“What are you doing?” Illya whispered harshly, and now Napoleon shook with laughter.

“If it’s not obvious maybe I should start again.” Napoleon leaned up, but Illya got a hand hastily over Napoleon’s mouth, stalling him, and Napoleon kissed his palm lightly before straightening back. 

“I don’t… you…” Illya trailed off helplessly.

“Surely you’ve been kissed before. You’re gorgeous,” Napoleon said candidly, and Illya grit his teeth, hoping that he could fight off a flush. 

“Yes. But. Not like that.” 

“Like what?” Napoleon asked, and from the single dim wall lamp set across the room, Illya could still make out his amusement, though there was still that strange gentleness to his touch, the soothing cadence of his caress.

“Like-“ _lovers_ , Illya wanted to say, though he bit the word down, but Napoleon understood him anyway. 

“ _Just_ sex is something for marks and targets,” Napoleon said, and now Illya allowed a kiss, blindsided again. He was still disoriented when pulled over to the bed, confused when Napoleon seemed interested in doing little else than curling close and kissing him. At the end of it all, sleepy, Napoleon had simply murmured, “I’m glad that you didn’t die today,” and Illya had buried his face in Napoleon’s shirt to hide the sudden pulse of grief that he felt. 

For Illya’s mother had said something similar to him once, after Kengir, the last loving sentiment she had ever expressed to her son in words: she would die of a heart attack in the middle of Illya’s next mission, and he would learn of it only after the debrief in Moscow, impersonally, from his commander. It seemed ironic that the first person to say that they cared if Illya lived or died since Illya’s own mother was an ex-CIA agent, and Illya started to laugh, brittle and low and hoarse, as Napoleon stroked his back and petted his hair soothingly until they were both asleep. They did not speak about it in the morning.

One.

Ten years in the CIA had given Napoleon an instinct for people. It wasn’t perfect, particularly where women were concerned. But it had not taken Napoleon long to understand Illya. After all, Illya was KGB - and Napoleon had been a soldier in the Cold War for a decade.

Kissing Illya had been impulsive, certainly, but ultimately necessary. The KGB operated by a wholly different playbook, one that Napoleon was not used to, and Illya’s blithe tendency to slant towards violence was somewhat uncomfortable. Besides, there was that particular _contempt_ that he commonly wore, so characteristic of KGB agents towards their American counterparts. Napoleon was patient with condescension, but his patience wasn’t infinite. 

And so he had kissed Illya in a safehouse in Tokyo out of curiosity and necessity and when they had woken up in the morning and gotten cleaned up he had kissed Illya again until they ended up back in bed. It was slow and unhurried and sloppy, and Napoleon had been telling the truth when he had told Illya that seduction was for marks. With anyone else, Napoleon seldom bothered with his usual tricks. He liked the casual gentle intimacy of just kissing and he was good at it, and he liked the luxury of doing it with someone he trusted, someone this _beautiful_ , someone who was just as dangerous as Napoleon himself. 

Besides, Illya seemed confused by it, even in the morning after, enough that his guard was lower than usual, and opportunism had ever been in Napoleon’s nature. Eventually it proved too much: Illya tugged away with a low and strangled gasp, and buried his face in Napoleon’s neck, hands clenched tight in Napoleon’s shirt. When Illya finally seemed to calm down enough to speak, his words were pressed and warm against Napoleon’s skin, and the question was not quite what Napoleon had been expecting.

“When was the first time you killed someone?” 

“Ah…” Napoleon blinked. “World War Two. I was a dumb kid out of Minnesota. It was in an awful place off Alaska. Think I was sixteen.”

“Attu?” 

“Yeah. Lied about my age. Like I said, I was dumb.” 

“You fought Japanese. Is it strange to be in Tokyo now?”

“No,” Napoleon let out a startled laugh. “It’s been more’n ten years. Nearly twenty. The world’s changed some, thank God.”

“I was eighteen,” Illya said slowly, quietly. “Kengir. Gulag rebellion.” 

“Nasty business,” Napoleon said, wondering where this was going. 

“Yes. We crushed them into the dirt.” Illya said shortly, and was silent for a long while more, until Napoleon started to feel sleepy again, his hands going still over Illya’s back. “How many people have you killed?”

“Uh-“ Napoleon paused. “Well. I don’t remember, to be honest. The war was pretty messy. And as to my time in the CIA, you kinda do what’s necessary. You know what that’s like.”

“Yes,” Illya said unemotionally. “There was newspaper on plane. On the way to Tokyo.”

Puzzled now, Napoleon thought this over. “The _New York Times_ , wasn’t it? You were reading it.”

“Case of Leslie Irvin,” Illya said, in the same flat tone. 

“The uh, serial killer? ‘Mad Dog’, I think they were calling him in the press. Thought they reversed the conviction. Something about a lack of an impartial jury thanks to all the publicity.” 

“Convicted on retrial,” Illya shrugged, his shoulders pressing briefly against Napoleon’s arm. “He only killed six people. I think I killed more than that in Kengir alone.”

“Well,” Napoleon said cautiously, “It’s not really the same thing, is it? You were facing prisoners and Irvin was shooting innocents.”

Illya sniffed. “Innocents? Innocence is something that everyone grows out of. Kengir held political prisoners. Mostly. It was a year after Stalin died. They were hoping for amnesty. When it did not come, the bloodletting started.”

“I suppose,” Napoleon said doubtfully, “The motive matters.” 

“Very much comfort to the dead.” 

“I had bad dreams after the war for a long time,” Napoleon admitted, after another pause. 

“But not anymore?”

“No.” 

“Neither do I,” Illya said quietly. “People like us, we are the true mad dogs. We have killed until killing is nothing. Our dreams have nothing. Eventually, someone will put us down.” 

Napoleon rolled on top of Illya, pinning him down, elbows over Illya’s shoulders. Illya stared back up at him, jaw tensed, eyes narrowed and hard, and Napoleon kissed him on the forehead, then between his eyes, and lower yet, to his nose, to his mouth. “I’m _still_ glad that you’re here,” Napoleon said firmly, against parting lips, and pressed closer, as Illya shook against him with a low and strangled moan, as fingers clawed and crept up to his shoulders.

2.0.

They were in Algeria playing cat and mouse with the OAS when Illya finally let Napoleon into his bed. Or, perhaps more accurately, he let Napoleon do more when in bed than just kissing and petting, and the ‘bed’ in question was really a nest of rags and their jackets. They were hiding out in an abandoned barn, awaiting extraction. It was in the middle of the day and sunlight was piercing through the gaps in the old slats of wood in slivers of pale amber that flickered uncertainly whenever the clouds passed. Above, the bars of wood that ran from wall to wall were encrusted with old bird droppings, and the walls creaked occasionally, grumbling, as though resentful of company. The air smelled stale and of rotting hay, of the gunpowder that dusted Illya’s sleeves, of Napoleon’s expensive, spicy cologne.

Napoleon kissed him with their pistols left close, sprawled on top, as lazy and as self-assured as ever. This location was probably safe: they’d left enough false leads elsewhere to entertain the OAS, and under Illya’s shoulder blades was a satchel containing the files that they had been after. Gaby had promised to pick them up at night and there were hours more to go; intimacy had felt sweetly inevitable. Again, as always, Illya felt disarmed. 

This time, he gave in. Napoleon sensed it, of course: Napoleon had an instinct for weakness, and now there was blood in the water. The kiss deepened, hands tugging up Illya’s shirt, and as Illya curled his arms up over Napoleon’s neck, Napoleon rode up against his thigh, the weight of his thickened cock blatantly present.

“May I?” Napoleon asked lightly, as Illya tipped his head back in a gasp. 

“What do you want?” The question was out before Illya could stop himself. It was habit, perhaps. Always the world had been the one to take. Family, sentiment, innocence and childhood, all had been scoured away and tempered. 

“What do _you_ want?” Napoleon countered, and he was not being playful. Illya took in a slow, surprised breath. No one had never asked _Illya_ what he had wanted. Not like this.

“More,” Illya breathed, because he did not know what to say. 

Fingers twitched a furl of his hair away from his forehead. “How much more?”

“I’ll let you know when you get there, _Cowboy_ ,” Illya frowned, wondering if Napoleon was teasing him after all, but Napoleon merely started to pull Illya’s shirt off. The hat got knocked away, and the turtleneck joined it, and Napoleon licked a playful stripe down Illya’s neck to his shoulder before rearing back for a long, slow look, openly appreciative.

“You’ve seen me with no clothes before,” Illya told him. Courtesy of an unfortunate incident in Osaka. 

“Doesn’t mean that I’ll get tired of it.” Napoleon grinned at him, and Illya turned his face away, with a slow breath. Flattery from Napoleon often embarrassed Illya; he did not quite know how to react to it.

“We are meant to be hiding from OAS.”

“Relax, they’ve got to be halfway across Algeria by now.”

“You are terrible spy,” Illya said, not for the first time and not for the last, and Napoleon smiled smugly as he shifted down, leaning his chin on Illya’s chest. They’d both not shaved for a couple of days, and Napoleon’s stubble was scratchy on his skin. 

“Tell you what, Peril. You keep an ear out, while I,” Napoleon kissed the flesh just above one of Illya’s nipples playfully, “Keep _you_ entertained. How’s that.”

“Typical American decadence,” Illya told him, but he moaned when Napoleon followed the kiss with another lazy swiping lick, this time up over his nipple, then he gave the pebbling skin an open-mouthed kiss. When Napoleon began to suck, Illya’s thighs curled up against Napoleon’s ribs, heels pushing into the dirt; when Napoleon started to nip, Illya’s head snapped back against their jackets with a low cry. If the OAS burst into the barn right now, Illya would not care in the least. His cock was pinned between them, riding up against Napoleon’s belly, pulsing. 

“All right up there?” Napoleon’s breath was cool against Illya’s spit-wet skin. 

“Have not… not done this before.”

Napoleon arched an eyebrow. “You’re a virgin?”

“No.” 

“First time with a man?” Napoleon pressed, still misunderstanding.

“Man or woman, was not like this,” Illya said, and tried tugging at Napoleon’s hair. He didn’t want to explain any further. In the life he had lived so far, since Kengir, intimacy had been a rare companion, tenderness a stranger. 

“That’s a pity,” Napoleon said soberly, squirming up to kiss Illya, but Illya turned his cheek, slanting it up over his jaw instead. 

“Why?” Illya asked suspiciously. 

“You probably shouldn’t have messed things up with Gaby,” Napoleon said, pressing a kiss on his cheekbone. “Everyone needs someone at least once in their lifetimes to hold them tight,” Napoleon nosed down, to nip at Illya’s ear, teeth catching tight on the lobe for a heartbeat. “To tell them _ty nuzhen mnye_ -”

“ _Ya tebya lyublyu_ ,” Illya corrected, grimacing at Napoleon’s twanging accent. “You said ‘I need you’, not ‘I love you’.”

“Love is like having faith,” Napoleon nuzzled down to Illya’s throat. “Sometimes it waxes, sometimes it wanes, and both sides have to pray that the other guy’s got it. I don’t understand the point. _Need_ , however, that I get.” 

Later, looking back, Illya would recognise this moment as the first warning sign. Now, however, he grumbled something about Napoleon’s Russian that he would forget afterwards, and tugged Napoleon up to kiss him. He let Napoleon spend the afternoon exploring, opening up, telling Napoleon the stories behind old scars; each time it felt like the past was peeling away from him, leaving him raw. When Napoleon finally edged down far enough to unbuckle Illya’s belt, his breath left him in a rush of relief. Like prayer. 

Napoleon remained unhurried. He pulled down Illya’s trousers and underwear, whistled appreciatively, then swiped his tongue up leaking flesh, sampling a treat. Illya bit down on a whimper and Napoleon chuckled, spitting into a palm, grasping Illya around the thickened root, still licking, until Illya’s patience snapped and he reached down to fist his hands in Napoleon’s shirt. Only then did Napoleon take him in, slowly, inch by torturous inch, his throat wet and tight, his bristly cheeks scraping intimately against Illya’s inner thighs. Dazed, Illya wasn’t sure what was better, the feel of himself wedged down Napoleon’s throat, or the sight of Napoleon frowning to himself as he tried to take another inch, cheeks hollowing. 

Illya whined when Napoleon bobbed back up, tongue curling, then jerked and hissed as Napoleon sank back down, so very deliberate. Fingers tugged pointedly at Illya’s hip before twitching down to squeeze his ass, and a startled, hoarse laugh unwound from Illya, the first fraying threads of his self-control. He rolled his hips tentatively and Napoleon _purred_ , sparking a first thickly electrifying surge of pleasure. Strung high on shocked lust, Illya broke quickly, twisting fingers into his mouth to choke down his cry. Napoleon pulled back and spat on the dirt, then grinned and wiped his mouth clean with the back of his palm. 

“You won’t like the taste,” Napoleon warned, his voice rusty, as Illya pulled him over. He was right, but Illya kissed him anyway, deeply, his second prayer for the day, and felt Napoleon chuckle.

Two.

Being in U.N.C.L.E. was both good and bad. The good part was, Waverly’s odd cadre of international not-quite-volunteer spies was intermittently funded and rife with politics. As above, so below: it wasn’t as though the UN was particularly unified to begin with. If Napoleon at any point decided to disappear, to start the first leg of the exit strategy he had planned over a decade ago within the CIA, he could most probably get away with it.

The bad part - and the complication - was Illya. 

Illya had not, as Napoleon had originally hoped, served out a stint of missions before returning to the KGB. He had become a permanent fixture of U.N.C.L.E.’s Section Two, instead, just like Napoleon, though where Napoleon was but one of at least five ex-CIA agents, Illya was the only ex-KGB. Was it even possible to become ex-KGB? Napoleon wasn’t convinced. But with Illya assigned to Napoleon more or less all the time as a partner… forget running away, even _missions_ developed complications. 

This was the problem with letting people get close, Napoleon decided. Eventually things always grew sticky, and more and more complicated, until it was an endless round of arguments and missed phonecalls and more arguments. Which was fine, in the scheme of things - up until the other person happened to be a far better predator than Napoleon himself. KGB agents tended to be terrifying, and Illya was no different. 

They were in Monaco, days after a successful mission. Gaby had returned ahead of them to New York, citing boredom, and Napoleon had lingered, because he liked Monaco: its beauty and its avarice both. He had been hoping that Illya would follow Gaby, but Illya had stayed, and Napoleon hadn’t thought that much of it. They were booked under different names to different rooms, and Waverly hadn’t asked them to return as yet. So Napoleon played his American businessman cover to the hilt, gambling, flirting. The mission had been stressful, and Napoleon needed to let off some steam.

He played baccarat at the Casino Monte Carlo at night and strolled around the Boulevard Louis II during the day, watching ships, usually with a woman on his arm. It was on the third day, at a roulette table in the casino, that Napoleon got his first sight of Illya since the mission’s conclusion. 

Illya sat next to him, and as the dealer called bets, he leaned close, to murmur into Napoleon’s ear. “If I see you again with a woman, you will see her in the papers, next day.” He smiled thinly at Napoleon as Napoleon froze, and as cold as Illya’s smile was, his eyes blazed with barely suppressed fury. Napoleon had excused himself after a round, and fled. 

Naturally, Illya tracked Napoleon down with uncomfortable ease. “I think you are being unfair,” Illya told him, as he sat on a bench beside Napoleon, by a yellowing pond in Jardin Alsace-Lorraine in Nice, surrounded by palms and lush grass. 

“In what way?” Napoleon asked, with pointed calm. “I’m supposed to handle you threatening to murder random women _fairly_ , am I?”

“Did not say murder. Also, women not random.” Illya frowned at Napoleon. The blazing rage had faded to an ugly simmer. “I thought we had an understanding.” 

Napoleon swallowed a sigh, and set his feet flat on the ground, ready to bolt. Thankfully, the park was empty. “Did we?” 

“You need me to say it?” Illya asked, his voice a low snarl. “ _Ya tebya lyublyu_. Are you happy now?”

Napoleon sucked in a slow breath. Somehow, he hadn’t expected this to happen. “Illya.”

“I need you,” Illya’s voice was growing brittle, cracking at the edges. “Is that what you want to hear instead?” 

“I’m sorry,” Napoleon said helplessly, taken aback. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” 

Illya stared at Napoleon, unblinkingly, for a long and frozen moment, then he slouched against the bench, bowing his head, and let out a bitter laugh. He closed his eyes, turning his face up to the sun, and didn’t look up when Napoleon got cautiously to his feet. For a moment, Napoleon wavered, ill at ease. But he had been telling Illya the truth when he had said that he could not see the point. This was just another leash, if a far more dangerous one. 

At the end, everyone still died alone, sooner or later: it was _life_ that mattered. And for more than ten years, even now, Napoleon had not been living the life that he wanted: instead, he had measured time in degrees of ugliness and violence. He was tired of the lies. But most of all, Napoleon was tired of dancing with death, and death walked too closely in Illya’s shadow.

3.0.

Their first mission together since the… misunderstanding was cleared… was a disaster. Napoleon remained bewildered and Illya remained furious: with Napoleon and with himself. If not for Gaby, they probably wouldn’t have left the Congo alive. As it was, they didn’t manage to rescue half of the hostages.

“What is wrong with you both?” Gaby rounded on them on the plane out, and Napoleon had smiled inscrutably at her and gone to sit close to the cockpit. His hands were shaky, Illya noted, and so Illya waited until Napoleon had drunk enough scotch to fall asleep before he bothered to give Gaby a reply. 

“We are working out a misunderstanding.” 

“That’s it?” Gaby’s voice rose a notch. “We nearly got killed! We got _four people_ killed!” 

“I know,” Illya said flatly, still conscious of his failures, but guilt felt like a pale shadow behind the simmering beast of his rage. “It will not happen again.”

“God, I hope not. _I’m_ the one who has to explain all this to Waverly.”

“You did well,” Illya told her. The chopshop girl had come a long way since Berlin. “If not for you-“

“Never mind that,” Gaby said impatiently, never being one to preen or rest on her laurels. “Really. What happened?”

Illya stared at her for a long moment. Could he trust Gaby? He was not so sure. They were friends, certainly, and had once been lovers - or something close to being lovers. But the world had a poor view of men who slept with men, and Illya did value his work and position in U.N.C.L.E.: it was a far better life than all that he had done before, lived for better reasons. 

“Private matter,” Illya said finally. “Will resolve.”

“Without anyone dying?” Gaby asked suspiciously. 

“For you, I will try,” Illya said sardonically, and Gaby sniffed. 

“You shouldn’t take Napoleon so seriously,” Gaby tried, probing around the edges. She was developing her own set of instincts, a fairly good set, at that.

“Oh?”

“He doesn’t take _himself_ seriously,” Gaby pointed out. “The fact is, he doesn’t really expect the world to take him seriously either. So he’s always surprised when it does. And then everyone gets upset.”

“He is a thief,” Illya said flatly. Whether Napoleon had meant to or not, he had stolen from Illya far more than Illya had thought himself capable to give, and Illya could only blame himself. Gaby was right. Napoleon did not hide what he was from the world. But he had - perhaps unconsciously - sold a lie so sweetly that Illya had taken the bait, KGB training be damned. Illya had not felt this helpless for years.

“He doesn’t hide that,” Gaby said gently. “Did he steal your watch again or-“

“Something like that,” Illya noted curtly, and was silent through the rest of the flight, through Waverly’s blisteringly sarcastic debrief, numb. He slunk home to his flat in the seedier side of Brighton Beach, only to find Napoleon on his heels, having tailed him from U.N.C.L.E. HQ. They stood on the sidewalk outside in icy silence for a long moment before Illya gave in and waved Napoleon over, and they trudged up three stories to his flat. It was a quiet block, where everyone kept out of everyone’s way: since Illya had first purchased it and moved in, he still did not know his neighbours’ faces. 

He also hadn’t bothered to furnish it further than the basics, and Napoleon’s curious searching glances were annoying to watch. Closing and locking the door, Illya switched the lights on, then he went to pour himself a glass of water as Napoleon made a small circuit of the flat, running his fingers over the secondhand table, the mismatched chairs, the crates stacked against the side that served as a bookshelf. Illya knew where _Napoleon_ lived: a West Village townhouse as elegant as its master. Illya himself had lived there for a long and languid week, once, in between missions with Napoleon. Looking back, that had been foolish.

“So this is why we never go to your place,” Napoleon said lightly, and for a moment Illya’s temper flared and nearly slipped his grip. He folded his arms, tightening his fingers in his elbows. 

“So sorry,” Illya shot back, bitingly. 

“I think we made Gaby angry.” 

“Surprised? Mission was near failure.” 

Napoleon sighed. “I know. Look. It’s not going to be a problem for long.” 

When Illya looked back again, later, he would know this to have been the second warning sign. Now, however, before he could ask, Napoleon walked right into Illya’s personal space, ignoring the glare and the warning scowl, and kissed lips clamped tight from anger. 

“Don’t,” Illya said harshly, when Napoleon tipped back for air. “You have nothing to give me.”

“That’s not true.” 

“What, then?” Illya asked challengingly, as he pointedly tugged Napoleon closer, with an arm around the small of Napoleon’s waist. “What can you give me?” 

“I’m beginning to think that women are less complicated,” Napoleon said, and laughed and clung on when Illya growled and tried to shove him away. He kissed Illya on the jaw, then on the mouth, until Illya’s spike of anger had faded back to a simmer, again disarmed by gentleness; Illya knew this now to be a lie, but still he was helpless. It was a lie that he had learned to crave.

“I can’t give you what you want from me,” Napoleon told him then, soberly, “But I can give you _something_. Hopefully that’s enough.” 

“What is it?”

Napoleon studied Illya curiously, petting his arms absently, up and down, just like the first time. “Do you enjoy working for U.N.C.L.E.?” he asked at last, mildly, in a strange non sequitur. 

Illya blinked. Later, too late, he would look back and recognise this as the final warning sign. Now, however, he shrugged. “It is better than KGB. The work is… not so dirty.”

“There’s more to life than spy work, don’t you think?”

“Greater good,” Illya frowned at Napoleon, puzzled. “We work for UN. Global security. I think we have done a lot of good.”

“Good and evil is a matter of popular opinion,” Napoleon said wryly.

“You want to return to CIA?” 

“No, no, not at all,” Napoleon laughed. “Good Lord. I meant retirement. Retirement plans.”

“Retirement is a long way away,” Illya pointed out. 

“Three cheers for the greater good,” Napoleon said, oddly and inscrutably amused, and leaned up to kiss Illya again, grasping his wrist, urging Illya’s hand down, to cup Napoleon’s ass. Obligingly, Illya squeezed, to get Napoleon to squirm against him, but then his fingers brushed _something_ hard under tailored fabric, lodged between the cheeks of Napoleon’s pert rump. 

“What…” Illya began breathlessly, wide-eyed. “This-“

“Saves some time with prep.” Napoleon whispered slyly into Illya’s ear. “Simple little thing. Keeps me ready.” 

Napoleon had - when- “When?”

“Last hour of our flight.” Napoleon said, with a roguish grin. “You were asleep and Gaby was ignoring me. I used the bathroom.”

“All through the debrief…” Illya trailed off, his voice growing husky; lust had just spiked rationality and anger out of his mind. “You. Have no shame.”

“Do something about it then,” Napoleon boldly cupped Illya between his legs and squeezed, which was how they ended up with Napoleon pressed between Illya and the kitchen counter, his trousers and belt and shoes tossed aside. Illya buried his mouth in the back of Napoleon’s neck, playing with the black plastic toy, rolling it with his fingers, shoving it sometimes deeper, just to hear Napoleon’s delighted little gasps. Napoleon had no shame. And this - this was bait again, a temptation before which Illya seemed to have no defenses.

“I like seeing you in apron,” Illya confided, his spare hand curled around Napoleon’s hip. Napoleon’s cock was an angry red, already leaking drips of fluid against the coarse wood of the kitchen counter, but he seemed as unruffled as ever, turning to smirk over his shoulder. 

“Well, if you have one here-“ 

“Sadly no,” Illya admitted, tiring of play. He was sweating into his shirt, his fingers clumsy as he navigated his own belt and clothes. “Do you have something for…?”

“Probably don’t need it,” Napoleon said, his voice hitching, arched against the counter, hands curled against the edge. Illya growled and spat into his hand to slick himself up, and the keening sound that Napoleon made when he pulled the toy out swept a fresh wave of darkly possessive lust. Napoleon was _his_. 

“ _Mine_ ,” Illya gasped, in broken-down Russian, as he lifted one of Napoleon’s thighs to spread him, and slid into that damningly tight heat. He closed the fist of his free hand over Napoleon’s cock, squeezing hard as he shoved deep; and Napoleon laughed as he swayed back, balancing himself against the counter, head lolling against Illya’s shoulder. 

It was an uncomfortable fit for a moment and Illya was almost certain that it was hurting Napoleon, but then teeth scraped against his jaw and Napoleon hissed, “Come on then, do it, _fuck me_ ,” and lust burned away the last of his self-control, jarring as it felt at a bone-deep level to hear obscenity spoken in Napoleon’s cultivated accent. There was a wrong note there, somewhere, but Illya was curled against Napoleon, _inside_ Napoleon, and their rhythm faltered, then turned inexorable, Illya muting his growls and grunts against Napoleon’s collar, Napoleon clamping fingers over his own mouth to keep himself quiet. It felt like they were doing violence to each other rather than making love. 

There was nothing of tenderness here, and _ah_ , here, here now was the wrong note, but the implications banked and faded against the consuming percussion of Illya’s lust, a roar in his blood that drowned out all other cares. Napoleon was whispering Illya’s name, choked out against his fingers, branding him apart. Illya bowed his head and tried to concentrate on stroking Napoleon off, all viciously efficient tugs, but Napoleon started to laugh and _now_ Illya was close, listening to those maddening gasping barks, Napoleon’s joyous mirth at a joke that only he could hear. 

He bit Napoleon on the back of the neck for it, almost resentful, and pressed a finger down between Napoleon’s thighs, sliding it up and against his cock, _inside_ , and Napoleon’s laugh broke into a keening wail that he muted badly against his fingers, coming thickly against his belly, against Illya’s arm, the counter. Illya growled and screwed his finger in further, then he rubbed his thumb against the stretched rim until Napoleon whimpered and sobbed something and jerked against him. Release felt like an afterthought behind the savage swell of acrid triumph. Illya sucked blood off his teeth, and kissed the mark he had left on Napoleon’s throat. 

Afterwards, curled with Napoleon on the creaking, overloaded single bed, Illya would finally recall something that Napoleon had said, long ago, when Illya had first been baited. _’Just’ sex is something for marks and targets._ Napoleon was curled naked against him, cheek pressed over Illya’s chest, and Illya pressed a palm down his back. They were both sticky with sweat, and this was not entirely comfortable. 

“Napoleon,” Illya said, out aloud, and felt Napoleon tense slightly and affect a yawn.

“Mm?”

“This is…” Illya trailed off, then he sighed. “Not what I wanted.”

“That’s the world for you,” Napoleon said soberly, though when he tipped his chin up, he was grinning, that sly and playful grin. “Was it that bad? You’ll hurt my feelings.”

“It was good,” Illya conceded, and bit down on his lower lip, uncertain. 

Tenderness had been a stranger to Illya for so long that he no longer knew its language. So he said nothing more, and let Napoleon curl back up against him, and in the morning, when Napoleon was gone - in a _week_ , when Napoleon was conspicuously missing at the U.N.C.L.E. mission briefing, Illya was not surprised. Napoleon could not have given Illya what Illya had wanted, but he had cared enough to try to give Illya closure, ruthlessly, and it was, perhaps, better than nothing at all. First loves were fleeting and rarely lasted; in time even the bitterness would pass. Regret was for winter evenings by the window, watching an empty street.

Three.

Nassau was having a busy morning. Napoleon stood on the stone beach, balanced precariously on a large rock, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, his shirt unbuttoned at the throat, and he watched the white yachts glide by, cutting against the seamless edge of sea and sky. Above, birds cawed at each other as they spun scything arcs in wide, hungry loops, riding the stiff breeze. Behind Napoleon, on the beach front, the road was choked with cars and tourists and locals, motors playing a basso rumbling score against notes of laughter and idle chatter.

For the first time since he had been a dumb kid who had run away from Minnesota, Napoleon had absolutely nothing to do and no set future plans. The world seemed to sprawl endlessly around him, unformed. He could stand in the stream or let it pass him by, and this, Napoleon decided, was what he had wanted. He had finally outrun his leash. He was free. 

Napoleon spent his days walking around Nassau, sometimes with a woman on his arm, sometimes alone. Once he saw a tall blonde man across the street, stopping Napoleon abruptly in his tracks, but it was a stranger. Napoleon had spent the rest of that day uneasy. He did think of Illya sometimes, and of Gaby, of U.N.C.L.E.: generally, he thought of them fairly fondly. Napoleon would be lying to himself if he said that he did not miss them. But Napoleon had spent far too long dreaming of liberty, a dream that had begun in Minnesota, born to a harsh father and to an unhappy mother who had loved neither of them. He could close that chapter now.

On the first day of forever, Napoleon sat in a sidewalk cafe by the beach and watched the birds. He remembered the face of the first man he had killed now. He had been a Japanese boy, possibly only a little older than Napoleon itself, and the last expression on the boy’s face had been one of terror and of pride. Now his flesh was dust. In his mind, Napoleon looked the boy again in the eyes, and made his peace.

Carefully, Napoleon picked up the complimentary glass of water, and poured it out on the stone at his feet: it would be the first toast of many in the days to come. Napoleon had danced his due. The memories to come, he hoped, could only be quieter.

**Author's Note:**

> Neil Gaiman wrote an excellent article about entitlement: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
> 
> Lying about age to join a world war: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-boy-who-became-a-world-war-ii-veteran-at-13-years-old-168104583/?no-ist
> 
> KGB research (This site has interviews with an ex-KGB agent: http://scienceofthekgb.tumblr.com/)  
> and dealing with terrorists: http://articles.latimes.com/1986-01-07/news/mn-13892_1_soviets  
> and in Riga: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/04/secret-kgb-torture-house-opens-its-doors-in-riga.html  
> Kengir uprising: http://museum.gulagmemories.eu/en/media/petrikonis-4-0
> 
> Kitchen porn: Have you seen the Napollya art by this awesome person cough cough: http://minghsgaiacrap.tumblr.com/
> 
> Leslie Irvin http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/12/obituaries/leslie-irvin-murderer-in-a-landmark-ruling.html
> 
> Nassau in the 1960s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f46TRWSTiTI
> 
> \--
> 
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


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